My brother just bought a bottle of mead from the local liquor store, which is funny because we’ve been trying to locate some mead for quite a damn long time, since one or two years ago at least, when our brother-in-law shared some of his home-brewed mead with us. It was a prickly pear flavored one, as I recall, and it was goddamned strong and delicious. Mead is made from fermented honey, as far as I understand it, and it was the drink that the Vikings were all about getting royally trashed on. Not sure if this bottle that we bought is precisely the same type of thing or not, but there’s one way to find out…

On the back of the bottle, it related an interesting tradition, which claimed that mead was the reason behind the word, “honeymoon.” Supposedly, in Ireland the bride and groom were to drink mead every day for one month after the wedding, which was intended to increase virility and fertility. In other words, it was intended to make them drunk and horny, and after a month-long bender on the stuff, it’s more than likely somebody would end up pregnant.

Other supposed origins of the word honeymoon also exist though:

The word honeymoon has its roots in Norse word “hjunottsmanathr” which was anything but blissful. The Northern European history describes it as the abduction of a bride from the neighboring village. It was imperative, that the abductor, who is husband to be, take his bride to be into hiding for period of time. His friends assured his and her safe keeping and kept their whereabouts unknown. Once the bride’s family gave up their search, the bridegroom returns to his people. This folkloric explanation presumably is the origin of today’s ‘honeymoon’, for its original meaning meant ‘hiding’.

I’ve also heard somewhere that the original role of groomsmen in medieval weddings was, through force of arms, to protect the wedding ceremony and the party until the ceremony was over and the bride was legally the property of the groom. I’ll have to look around for where I read that though. While I’m at it, here are two other cool old wedding customs:

In Roman law, the wedding was to consist of ten witnesses in the presence of the officials in order to prevent the evil spirits from causing mischief and disharmony. The bridesmaids and ushers all dressed in identical clothing to the bride and groom so that the evil spirits would not know who was getting married.

Why does the bride stands on the left and the groom on the right during the ceremony? The origin of this goes back to the days when a groom would capture his bride by kidnapping her. If the groom had to fight off other men who also wanted her as their bride, he would hold his bride-to-be with his left hand allowing his right hand to be free to use his sword.